The Washer of the Ford: Legendary moralities and barbaric tales

All that day there was no sound from the hollow tree. At the setting of the sun a blackbird lit upon a small branch that drooped over the aperture, and sang a brave lilt. Then the dark came, and the moon rose, and the stars glimmered through the dew.

At midnight the moon was overhead. A flood of pale gold rays lit up the branches of the oak, and turned the leaves into a lustrous bronze. The watchers heard a voice singing in the silence of the night – a voice muffled and obscure, as from one in a pit, or as that of a shepherd straying in a narrow corrie. Words they caught, though not all; and this was what they heard:5

O yellow lamp of Ioua that is having a cold pale flame there,Put thy honey-sheen upon me who am close-caverned with Death:Sure it is nought I see now who have seen too much and too little:O moon, thy breast is softer and whiter than hers who burneth the day.Put thy white light on the grave where the dead man my father is,And waken him, waken him, wake!And put my soft shining on the breast of the woman my mother,So that she stir in her sleep and say to the Viking beside her,“Take up thy sword, and let it lap blood, for it thirsts with long thirst.”And O Ioua, be as the sea-calm upon the hot heart of Ardanna, the girl:Tell her that Cathal loves her, and that memory is sweeter than life.I list her heart beating here in the dark and the silence,And it is not lonely I am, because of that, and remembrance.O yellow flame of Ioua, be a spilling of blood out of the heart of Ecta,So that he fall dead, inglorious, slain from within, as a greybeard;And light a fire in the brain of Molios, so that he shall go moonstruck,And men will jeer at him, and he will die at the last, idly laughing.For lo, I worship thee, Ioua; and if you can give my message to Neis, —Neis the helot out of Aoidû, who is in Iona, bondman to Colum, —Tell him I hail you as Bandia, as god-queen and mighty,And that he had the wisdom and I was a fool with trickling ears of moss.But grant me this, O goddess, a bitter moon-drinking for Colum!May he have the moonsong in his brain, and in his heart the moonfire:Flame burn him in heart of flame, and may he wane as wax at the furnace,And his soul drown in tears, and his body be a nothingness upon the sands!

The watchers looked at each other, but said no word. On the pale face of each was fear and awe. What if this new god-teaching were false, and if Cathal was right, and the old gods were the lords of life and death? The moonlight fell upon them, and they saw doubt in the eyes of each other. Neither looked at the white fire. Out of the radiance, cold eyes might stare upon them: and at that, sure they would leap to the woods, laughing wild, and be as the beasts of the forest.

While it was still dark, an hour before the dawn, one of the twain awoke from a brief slumber. His gaze wandered from vague tree to tree. Thrice he thought he saw dim shapes glide from bole to bole or from thicket to thicket. Suddenly he discerned a tall figure, silent as a shadow, standing at the verge of the glade.

His low cry aroused his companion.

“What is it, Mûrta?” the young man asked in a whisper.

“A woman.”

When they looked again she was gone.

“It was one of the Hidden People,” said Mûrta, with restless eyes roaming from dusk to dusk.

“How are you for knowing that, Mûrta?”

“She was all in green, just like a green shadow she was, and I saw the green fire in her eyes.”

“Have you not thought of one that it might be?”

“Who?”

“Ardanna.”

With that the young man rose and ran swiftly to the place where he had seen the figure. But he could see no one. Looking at the ground he was troubled: for in the moonshine-dew he descried the imprint of small feet.

Thereafter they saw or heard nought, save the sights and sounds of the woodland.

At sunrise the two youths rose. Mûrta lifted up his arms, then sank upon his knees with bowed head.

“Why do you do that forbidden thing?” said Diarmid, that was his companion. “Have you forgotten Cathal the monk that is up there alone with death? If Molios the holy one saw you worshipping the Light he would do unto you as he has done unto Cathal.”

But before Mûrta answered they heard the voice of Cathal once more – hoarse and dry it was, but scarce weaker than when it thrilled them at the rising of the moon.

This was what he chanted in his muffled voice out of his grave there in the hollow oak:

O hot yellow fire that streams out of the sky, sword-white and golden,Be a flame upon the monks who are praying in their cells in Ioua!Be a fire in the veins of Colum, and the hell that he preacheth be his.And be a torch to the men of Lochlin that they discover the Isle and destroy it!For I see this thing, that the old gods are the gods that die not:All else is a seeming, a dream, a madness, a tide ever ebbing.Glory to thee, O Grian, lord of life, first of the gods, Allfather.Swords and spears are thy beams, thy breath a fire that consumeth.And upon this isle of Â-rinn send sorrow and death and disaster,Upon one and all save Ardanna, who gave me her bosom,Upon one and all send death, the curse of a death slow and swordless,From Molios of the Cave to Mûrta and Diarmid my doomsmen!

At that Mûrta moved close to the oak.

“Hail, O Cathal!” he cried. There was silence.

“Art thou a living man still, or is it the death of thee that is singing there in the hollow oak?”

“My limbs perish, but I die not yet,” answered the muffled voice that had greeted the sun.

“I am Mûrta mac Mûrta mac Neisa, and my heart is sore for thee, Cathal!”

There was no word to this. A thrush upon a branch overhead lifted its wings, sang a wild sweet note, and swooped arrowly through the green gloom of the leaves.

“Cathal, that wert a monk, which is the true thing? Is it Christ, or the gods of our fathers?”

Silence. Three oaks away a woodpecker thrust its beak into the soft bark, tap-tapping, tap-tapping.

“Cathal, is it death you are having, there in the dark and the silence?”

Mûrta strained his ears, but he could hear no sound. Over the woodlands a voice floated, drowsy-warm and breast-white – the voice of a cuckoo calling a love-note from cool, green shadow to shadow across a league of windless blaze.

Then Mûrta that was a singer, went to where the bulrushes grew by a little tarn that was in the moss an arrow-flight away. He plucked a last-year reed, straight and brown, and with his knife cut seven holes in it. With a thinner reed he scooped the hollow clean.

Thereupon he returned to the oak. Diarmid, who had begun to eat of the food that had been left with them, sat still, with his eyes upon him.

Mûrta put his hollow reed to his lips, and he played. It was a forlorn, sweet air that he had heard from a shepherding woman upon the hills. Then he played a burying-song of the islanders, wherein the wash of the sea and the rippling of the waves upon the shore was heard. Then he played the song of love, and the beating of hearts was heard, and sighs, and a voice like a distant bird-song rose and fell.

When he ceased, a voice came out of the hollow oak —

“Play me a death-song, Mûrta mac Mûrta mac Neisa.”

Mûrta smiled, and he played again the song of love.

After that there was silence for a brief while. Then Mûrta played upon his reed for the time it takes a heron to mount her seventh spiral. Then he ceased, and threw away the reed, and stood erect, staring into the greenness. In his eyes was a strange shine. He sang —

Out of the wild hills I am hearing a voice, O Cathal!And I am thinking it is the voice of a bleeding sword.Whose is that sword? I know it well: it is the sword of the Slayer —Him that is called Death, and the song that it sings I know: —O where is Cathal mac Art, that is the cup for the thirst of my lips?Out of the cold grayness of the sea I am hearing, O Cathal,I am hearing a wave-muffled voice, as of one who drowns in the depths:Whose is that voice? I know it well: it is the voice of the Shadow —Her that is called the Grave, and the song that she sings I know: —O where is Cathal mac Art, he has warmth for the chill that I have?Out of the hot greenness of the wood I am hearing, O Cathal,I am hearing a rustling step, as of one stumbling blind.Whose is that rustling step? I know it well: the rustling walk of the Blind One —She that is called Silence, and the song that she sings I know: —O where is Cathal mac Art, that has tears to water my stillness?

After that there was silence. Mûrta moved away. When he sat by Diarmid and ate, there was no word spoken. Diarmid did not look at him, for he had sung a song of death, and the shadow was upon him. He kept his gaze upon the moss: if he raised his eyes might he not see the Slayer, or the Shadow or the Blind One?

Noon came. None drew nigh: not a face was seen shadowily afar off. Sometimes the hoofs of the deer rustled among the bracken. The snarling of young foxes in an oak-root hollow was like a red pulse in the heat. At times, in the sheer abyss of blue sky to the north, a hawk suspended: in the white-blaze southerly a blotch like swirled foam appeared for a moment at long intervals, as a gannet swung from invisible pinnacles of air to the invisible sea.

The afternoon drowsed through the sunflood. The green leaves grew golden, saturated with light. At sundown a flight of wild doves rose out of the pines, wheeled against the shine of the west and flashed out of sight, flames of purple and rose, of foam-white and pink.

The gloaming came, silverly. The dew glistened on the fronds of the ferns, in the cups of the moss. From glade to glade the cuckoos called. The stars emerged delicately, as the eyes of fawns shining through the greengloom of the forest. Once more the moon snowed the easter frondage of the pines and oaks.

No one came nigh. Not a sound had sighed from the oak since Mûrta had sung at the goldening of the day. At sunset Mûrta had risen, to lean, intent, against the vast bole. His keen ears caught the jar of a beetle burrowing beneath the bark. There was no other sound.

At the fall of dark the watchers heard the confused far noise of a festival. It waned as a lost wind. Dim veils of cloud obscured the moon; a low rainy darkness suspended over the earth.

Thus went the second day and the second night.

When, after the weary vigil of the hours, dawn came at last, Mûrta rose and struck the oak with a stone.

“Cathal!” he cried, “Cathal!”

There was no sound: not a stir, not a sigh.

“Cathal! Cathal!”

Mûrta looked at Diarmid. Then, seeing his own thought in the eyes of his friend he returned to his side.

“The Blind One has been here,” said Diarmid in a low voice.

At noon there was thunder, and great heat. The noise of rustling wings filled the underwood.

Diarmid fell into a deep sleep. When the thunder had travelled into the hills, and a soft rain fell, Mûrta climbed into the branches of the oak. He stared down into the hollow, but could see nothing save a green dusk that became brown shadow, and brown shadow that grew into a blackness.

“Cathal!” he whispered.

Not a breath of sound ascended like smoke.

“Cathal! Cathal!”

The slow drip of the rain slipped and pattered among the leaves. The cry of a sea-bird flying inland came mournfully across the woods. A distant clang, as of a stricken anvil, iterated from the barren mountain beyond the forest.

“Cathal! Cathal!”

Mûrta broke a straight branch, stripped it of the leaves, and, forcing the thicker end downward, let it fall sheer.

It struck with a dull, soft thud. He listened: there was not a sound.

“A quiet sleep to you, monk,” he whispered, and slipped down through the boughs, and was beside Diarmid again.

At dusk the rain ceased. A cool green freshness came into the air. The stars were as wind-whirled fruit blown upward from the tree-tops. The moon, full-orbed and with a pulse of flame, led a tide of soft light across the brown shores of the world.

The vigils of the watchers were over. Mûrta and Diarmid rose. Without a word they moved across the glade: the faint rustle of their feet stirred the bracken: then they left the under-growth and were among the pines. Their shadows lapsed into the obscure wilderness. A doe, heavy with fawn, lay down among the dewy fern, and was at peace there.

III

At midnight, when the whole isle lay in the full flood of the moon, Cathal stirred.

For three days and three nights he had been in that dark hollow, erect, wedged as a spear imbedded in the jaws of a dead beast. He had died thrice: with hunger, with thirst, with weariness. Then when hunger was slain in its own pain, and thirst perished of its own agony, and weariness could no more endure, he stirred with the death-throe.

“I die,” he moaned.

“Die not, O white one,” came a floating whisper, he knew not whence, though it was to him as though the crushing walls of oak breathed the sound.

“I die,” he gasped, and the froth bubbled upon his nether lip. With that his last strength went. No more could he hold his head above his shoulder, nor would his feet sustain him. Like a stricken deer he sank. So thin was he, so worn, that he slipt into a narrow crevice where dead leaves had been, and lay there, drowning in the dark.

Was that death, or a cold air about his feet, he wondered? With a dull pain he moved them: they came against no tree-wood – the coolness about them was of dewy moss. A wild hope flashed into his mind. With feeble hands he strove to sink farther into the crevice.

“I die,” he gasped, “I die now, at the last.”

“Die not, O white one,” breathed the same low sweet whisper, like leaves stirred by a nesting bird.

“Save, O save,” muttered the monk, hoarse with the death-dew.

Then a blackness came down upon him from a great height, and he swung in that blank gulf as a feather swirled this way and that in the void of an abyss.

When the darkness lifted again, Cathal was on his back, and breathing slow, but without pain. A sweet wonderful coolness and ease, that he knew now! Where was he? he wondered. Was he in that Pàras that Colum and Molios had spoken of? Was he in Hy Bràsil, of which he had heard Aodh the Harper sing? Was he in Tir-na’n-Òg, where all men and women are young for evermore, and there is joy in the heart and peace in the mind and delight by day and by night?

Why was his mouth so cool, that had burned dry as ash? Why were his lips moist, with a bitter-sweet flavour, as though the juice of fruit was there still?

He pondered, with closed eyes. At last he opened them, and stared upward. The profound black-blue dome of the sky held group after group of stars that he knew: was not that sword and belt yonder the sword-gear of Fionn? Yon shimmering cluster, were they not the dust of the feet of Alldai? That leaping green and blue planet, what could it be but the harp of Brigidh, where she sang to the gods?

A shadow crossed his vision. The next moment a cool hand was upon his eyes. It brought rest, and healing. He felt the blood move in his veins: his heart beat: a throbbing was in his throat.

Then he knew that he had strength to rise. With a great effort he put his weariness from off him, and staggered to his feet.

Cathal gave a low sob. A fair beautiful woman stood by him.

“Ardanna!” he cried, though even as the word leaped from his lips he knew that he looked upon no Pictish woman.

She smiled. All his heart was glad because of that. The light in her eyes was like the fire of the moon, bright and wonderful. The delicate body of her was pale green, and luminous as a leaf, with soft earth-brown hair falling down her shoulders and over the swelling breast; even as the small green mounds over the dead the two breasts were. She was clad only in her own loveliness, though the moonshine was about her as a garment.

“Like a green leaf, like a green leaf,” Cathal muttered over and over below his breath.

“Are you a dream?” he asked simply, having no words for his wonder.

“No, Cathal, I am no dream. I am a woman.”

“A woman? But … but … you have no body as other women have: and I see the moonbeam that is on your breast shining upon the moss behind you!”

“Is it thinking you are, poor Cathal, that there are no women and no men in the world except those who are in thick flesh, and move about in the suntide.”

Cathal stared wonderingly.

“I am of the green people, Cathal. We are of the woods. I am a woman of the woods.”

“Hast thou a name, fair woman?”

“I am called Deòin.”6

“That is well. Truly ‘Green Life’ is a good name for thee. Are there others of thy kin in this place?”

“Look!” and at that she stooped, lifted the dew of a white flower in the moonshine, and put it upon his eyes.

Cathal looked about him. Everywhere he saw tall fair pale-green lives moving to and fro: some passing out of trees, swift and silent as rain out of a cloud; some passing into trees, silent and swift as shadows. All were fair to look upon: tall, lithe, graceful, moving this way and that in the moonshine, pale green as the leaves of the lime, soft shining, with radiant eyes, and delicate earth-brown hair.

“Who are these, Deòin?” Cathal asked in a low whisper of awe.

“They are my people: the folk of the woods: the green people.”

“But they come out of trees: they come and they go like bees in and out of a hive.”

“Trees? That is your name for us of the woods. We are the trees.”

“You the trees, Deòin! How can that be?”

“There is life in your body. Where does it go when the body sleeps, or when the sap rises no more to heart or brain, and there is chill in the blood, and it is like frozen water? Is there a life in your body?”

“Ay, so. I know it.”

“The flesh is your body: the tree is my body.”

“Then you are the green life of a tree?”

“I am the green life of a tree.”

“And these?”

“They are as I am.”

“I see those that are men and those that are women, and their offspring too I see.”

“They are as I am.”

“And some are crowned with pale flowers.”

“They love.”

“And hast thou no crown, Deòin, who art so fair?”

“Neither hast thou, Cathal, though thy face is fair. Thy body I cannot see, because thou hast a husk about thee.”

With a low laugh Cathal removed his raiment from him. The whiteness of his body was like a flower there in the moonshine.

“That shall not be against me,” he said. “Truly I am a man no longer, if thee and thine will have me as one of the wood-folk.”

At that Deòin called. Many green phantoms glided out of the trees, and others, hand-in-hand, flower-crowned, crossed the glade.

“Look, green lives,” Deòin cried in her sweet leaf-whisper, rising now like a wind-song among birchen boughs: “Look, here is a human. His life is mine, for I saved him. I have put the moonshine dew upon his eyes. He sees as we see. He would be one of us, for all that he has no tree for his body, but flesh, white over red.”

One who had moved thitherward out of an ancient oak looked at Cathal.

“Wouldst thou be of the wood-folk, man?”

“Ay, fain am I; for sure, for sure, O druid of the trees.”

“Wilt thou learn and abide by our laws, the first of which is that none may stir from his tree until the dusk has come, nor linger away from it when the dawn opens gray lips and drinks up the shadows?”

“I have no law now but the law of green life.”

“Good. Thou shalt live with us. Thy home shall be the hollow oak where thy kin left thee to die. Why did they do that evil deed?”

“Because I did not believe in the new gods.”

“Who are thy gods, man whom this green one here calls Cathal?”

“They are the Sun, and the Moon, and the Wind, and others that I will tell you of.”

“Hast thou heard of Keithoir?”

“No.”

“He is the god of the green world. He dreams, and his dreams are Springtide and Summertide and Appletide. When he sleeps without dream there is winter.”

“Have you no other god but this earth-god?”

“Keithoir is our god. We know no other.”

“If he is thy god, he is my god.”

“I see in the eyes of Deòin that she loves thee, Cathal the human. Wilt thou have her love?”

Cathal looked at the girl. His heart swam in light.

“Ay, if Deòin will give me her love, my love shall be hers.”

The Annir-Choille moved forward, and brushed softly against him as a green branch.

He put his arms around her. She had a cool, sweet body to feel. He was glad she was no moonshine phantom. The beating of her heart against his made a music that filled his ears.

Deòin stooped and plucked white, dewy flowers. Of these she wove a wreath for Cathal. He, likewise, plucked the white blooms, and made a coronal of foam for the brown wave of her hair.

Then, hand in hand, they fared slowly forth across the moonlit glade. None crossed their path, though everywhere delicate green lives flitted from tree to tree. They heard a wonderful sweet singing, aerial, with a ripple as of leaves lipping a windy shore of light. A green glamour was in the eyes of Cathal. The green fire of life flamed in his veins.

IV

Molios, the saint of Christ, that lived in the sea-cave of the Isle of the Peak, so that even in his own day it was called the Holy Isle, endured to a great age.

Some say of him that before his hair was bleached white as the bog-cotton, he was slain by the heathen Picts, or by the fierce summer-sailors out of Lochlin. But that is an idle tale. His end was not thus. A Culdee, who had the soul of a bat, feared the truth, though that gave glory to God, and wrote both in ogham and lambskin the truthless tale that Molios went forth with the cross and was slain in a north isle.

On a day of the days every year, Molios fared to the Hollow Oak that was in the hill-forest beyond the rath of Ecta mac Ecta. There he spake long upon the youth that had been his friend, and upon how the Evil One had prevailed with Cathal, and how the islander had been done to death there in the oak. Then he and all his company sang the hymns of peace, and great joy there was over the doom of Cathal the monk, and many would have cleft the great tree or burned it, so that the dust of the sinner might be scattered to the four winds: only this was banned by Molios.

It was well for Cathal, who slept there through the hours of light! Deep slumber was his, for never once did he hear the noontide voices, nor ever in his ears was the long rise and fall of the holy hymns.

But when, in the twentieth year after Cathal had been thrust into the hollow oak, Molios came at sundown, being weary with the heat, the saint heard a low, faint laughter issuing from the tree, like fragrance from a flower.

None other heard it. He saw that with gladness. Quietly he went with the islanders.

When the moon was over the pines, and all in the rath slept, Molios arose and went silently back into the forest.

When he came to the Doom-Tree he listened long, with his ear against the bark. There was no sound.

His voice was old and quavering, but fresh and young in the courts of heaven, when it reached there like a fluttering bird tired from long flight. He sang a holy hymn.

He listened. There was no laughter. He was glad at that. All had been a dream, for sure.

Then it was that he heard once again the low, mocking laughter. He started back, trembling.

“Cathal!” he cried, with his voice like a wuthering wind.

“I am here, O Molios,” said a voice behind him.

The old Culdee turned, as though arrow-nipped. Before him, white in the moonshine, stood a man, naked.

At first Molios knew him not. He was so tall and strong, so fair and wonderful. Long locks of ruddy hair hung upon his white shoulders: his eyes were lustrous, and had the lovely, soft light of the deer. When he moved, it was swiftly and silently. No stag upon the hills was more fair to see.

Then, slowly, Cathal the monk swam into Cathal of the Woods. Molios saw him whom he knew of old, as a blue flame is visible within the flame of yellow.

“I am here, O Molios.”

Strange was the voice: faint and far the tone of it: yet it was that of a living man.

“Is it a spirit you are, Cathal?”

“I am no spirit. I am Cathal the monk that was, Cathal the man now.”

“How came you out of hell, you that are dead, and the dust of whose crumbling bones is in the hollow of this oak?”

“There is no hell, Culdee.”